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Available on: Xbox 360

XBLA Summer Uprising teaser promotes big games from indie devs

Like Summer of Arcade but cheaper!

Words: on August 2, 2011
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All hail the indie game. A new trailer for the Summer Uprising released today, showcasing the eight previously announced games, and they look great.

If you haven’t heard of Summer Uprising, it’s a program running from Aug 22 to Sep 2, which aims to promote some of the best indie games available from Xbox Live Indie Games - we like to think of them as a plucky underdog version of this.

Summer Uprising is great because along with many great titles (often available for just $1 and $3) on XBLIG, there are dozens of dating advice games or titles built around including the word “zombie” in the title. Summer Uprising saves you the time of searching for the gems among the… less rigorously screened products.

 

The eight games announced for Uprising now were voted on by game developers, and two more will be chosen through fans voting via the Summer Uprising Facebook page. You can cast your vote until Aug 15, so don’t mess it up by picking the wrong game - hey, look! There’s super-indie game Blocks That Matter down there near the bottom.
Hopefully, this program (and maybe more like it in the future) will let Microsoft know that there’s room on the internet for AAA titles and games developed without major publishers alike.

Aug 2, 2011

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10 comments

  • jenga - March 6, 2013 8:31 p.m.

    I bought doom and destiny a few weeks ago and love it! The cameos from Zelda and the A-Team among others literally made me laugh out loud. Also highly recommend Odyssey 3011 if you like the classic Elite and other space sim games, Solar 2 is a good game for a relaxing hour or two and clover is a great adventure/puzzle game reminiscent of Fantastic Dizzy from the Sega Mastersystem era. I know its a bit of a pain to troll through all the generic Minecraft-esque games but if you do a bit of searching theres a ton of lists of great indie games online and most are only 80MS I've probably paid a fair amount for all the games I've bought but for sheer quirkiness and originality I would do it again and that is what makes the indie games so much fun.

  • Fro4show - August 3, 2011 3:46 p.m.

    No Hawken any time soon? THAT will be an indie game to rule all indie games... I hope.

  • GamesRadarPaulRyan - August 3, 2011 12:21 p.m.

    @Duffman while it's hard for small dev teams to compete graphically with big-budget games, they often have the creative freedom to try some really neat — and sometimes risky — core mechanics. Don't give up on indies. On Xbox I'd recommend Wizard's Keep, Soulcaster II, The Tempura of the Dead, Blocks that Matter (mentioned above), and Zombie Estate. @DirkSteele1 I'm glad to hear you're interested in indie reviews on GR. Maybe I'll try to bug them about including more.

  • DirkSteele1 - August 3, 2011 11:33 a.m.

    Doom and Destiny has caught my attention. Gamesradar, I know you do not usually review indie games (Cthulhu saves the world aside) but perhaps short one page reviews would be something the readership would like to see. I certainly would.

  • asspills - August 3, 2011 7:27 a.m.

    Speed runner looks like it could be an absolute gem! If it plays as good as it looks, it might be one of my all time favorite games downloadable games. Also that side-scrolling shooter game/"Soldat" knock-off looks serviceable.

  • theguyinthecloset - August 3, 2011 6:49 a.m.

    Only T.E.C 3001 looks interesting but it could get dull fast even with difficulty hikes. Also Facebook based voting will surely bring crap games up.

  • birdro - August 3, 2011 2:05 a.m.

    Same as Duff, I like the idea of indie developers bringing fresh ideas to the table, but too many of them are content firing off half baked games like their cheap price validated a lack of effort. These all look like they have more polish than the average indie game, but if mechanics are loose that's that. ...I like the look of Speedrunner though.

  • PooPSock - August 2, 2011 10:37 p.m.

    Love the look of speedrunner. Sounds like it was made for me.

  • Duffman - August 2, 2011 10:36 p.m.

    And most of them look like flash games. Which is sad because I want to like indie games, but they're always so shallow.

  • supernoob - August 2, 2011 8:35 p.m.

    Wait, is that dr.willys castle music I hear in the background... copyright!!!

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